5 Novel Ways to Keep Warm this Winter

It’s the middle of December, you’re bogged down with Christmas preparations, there are a million and one things you need to remember to do for the kids at school and you feel like you might as well just hand your cheque book over to the PTA. You’re just about on top of things, then the worst happens… your heating goes. No problem if you can get an engineer out fast but what do you do if you’re stuck in the cold for a few days while he or she is waiting for a brand new heating pump to arrive? Of course you could borrow a heater, or stick the fire on if you have one for a bit of rustic charm, and actual heat, but if you can’t, we have a few ideas for keeping warm… though we’re not promising anything!

  1. Tealight table: when I had just graduated, we found ourselves with no heating for a few weeks one very cold winter. This was on top of having just being gazumped and finding ourselves back in our student house, with no money, no furniture and a general feeling of despair. We created a little heating table in the middle of the room. It was actually a bread crate with a piece of wood on top and around 50 cheap tealight candles, but it provided a surprising amount of heat! Not a great long term plan though, and perhaps not ideal with small kids around.
  2. Going to a friend’s house: popping round to your friend’s house or visiting relatives just to enjoy their warm house is perfectly acceptable in these circumstances. If you are close you could also take your washing over, and enjoy a nice hot shower while you are waiting for it to finish. Just be prepared to offer the same in return should it happen to them.
  3. The eating approach: Just keep cooking and eating. Lots of nice winter warmer meals: soups, casseroles etc. A nice stew slow cooking on the hob will keep the kitchen warm, so close the doors and bask in its heat, then enjoy some warm tummies when it’s done. Of course, if the heating problem is with the gas, this might not be so straightforward.
  4. The exercise approach: One you might have to take when you’ve overdone the eating approach. Get the whole family out for a run or a bike ride, have a star jump competition – anything to get moving. Of course, if you can’t have a shower afterwards, those close to you might not appreciate this method quite as much! Though it does give you another excuse to ‘pop round’ and use their shower!
  5. Good old fashioned snuggling up: Get the duvet out, squash up on the sofa with the kids to watch a film, and get warm as they spend the whole time wriggling around, arguing and generally generating a lot of heat. You could spend a large part of the weekend like this, and it certainly wouldn’t be frowned upon to combine it with a glass of wine or two. Actually, this isn’t too bad a way to spend the weekend even when the heating is back on!

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